The carnival of home preserving is now up!
Check it out on Jennifer's blog! In the future I plan to host this carnival so stay tuned! Feel free to email me photos of your harvesting/canning/preserving, I would love to share them here on my blog!
Can you smell the basil dehydrating? How about the Italian pear chicken (homemade gourmet recipe) that is in my crock pot for supper? No? Tisk Tisk, maybe you need to come over!
As we "strolled" through the garden this afternoon for a leisurely Sunday walk, look at what we came in the house with! Cabbage 4 heads, Basil large leaf and enough to make pesto, basil cubes for freezing and to dry some too! The next photo is beets boiling to skin & eat, and then 2 different piles hubby made of all the cucs! Click on any photo for the larger version!
More photos in the garden album!
Moon flower vine on my arbor into the garden- the flowers are about 8-9 inches WIDE! they are gorgeous!
It's a lovely day here (now)- after rain storm starting at 3:45 am I have not been back to sleep since laying there trying to sleep with the lightening, thunder and rain crashing down! lol
We weeded the last strawberry bed- its in a grow box and is covered with chicken wire to keep the nasty bad squirrels out! I see some more blooms.... yippee!
I will be using cucumber sticks for the Three different dip tastings at my 4 meals in 4 minutes presentation tomorrow here at the house. We are also tasting Chicken Enchilada soup, cornbread and pecan muffins all using Homemade Gourmet mixes! the dips? Garlic basil, tropical and mock spinach- are you coming over about 3?
Here is the bounty of the morning!
I am also going to make the remaining cucs into cuc chips using my honeys "special recipe". (equal amounts of water and vinegar, then some salt and pepper) and I like to add sliced onion too!
We pick about this many every 2-3 days! I have to admit that I have one of Katie's friends coming over every couple days to hunt squirrels (yes it is squirrel season here in Missouri) they are horrid at sabotaging the garden and for me its them or my food and well........ it's them! I will be out taking some photos of the garden after posting this and I will load them to the garden photo album so be sure to check that and see what is new!
hmm battery in camera is dead- when I take kasey to work this evening I will stop and get a new battery so check back tomorrow for the garden photos in the gardening photo album.
rain rain go away
come again another day
seems we have rain at least once a day if not more and altho I appreicate the moisture, we need SUN SUN SUN to make the plant grow, not the moss! lol Its very hard to get the grow boxes filled with the dirt and compost when it's raining all day-
argh!
Calendula (Calendula officianalis)is the 2008 Herb of the Year. The International Herb Association http://www.iherb.org/ designates an official herb annually. It is meant to educate the buying public about lesser known herbs, and provides information and materials for plant sellers, nurseries and garden centers to make use of the Herb of the Year information to aid in marketing the plant. 
Growing Calendula: Calendula is a cool season annual and is grown from seed. There are some newer varieties that claim to be heat resistant, but the simple, old fashioned varieties usually give up and go to seed by late June or early July in the Midwest. Plant calendula seed in spring, after danger of frost. Or plant in late August to early September for fall blooming. Plant in small pots or flats for transplanting later, or plant seed directly where you want them to grow. Once the plants begin to bloom, it's a good idea to keep the seed heads cut off, to encourage the plant to continue blooming. If you don't, most varieties will simply bloom for a few weeks and go to seed and the plant will die.
For more information about the Herb of the Year, visit the International Herb Association website: http://www.iherb.org/ and the Herb Society of America site: http://www.herbsociety.org/
well, one of the men from church drives the Amish and they made a trip to Michigan last week, we all preordered apples and our family ordered 4 bushel. He brought over 200 bushel home with him for us all.
From our 4 bushel, we now are in the process of processing them into 23 pints and 25 quarts of applesauce, a crockpot full of apple butter, i have 2 food dryers full of apple slices and I am working on my 4th batch of apple jelly, altho I think one batch will be syrup only! Tonight is football and tomorrow night we will be making up the last bushel sack into apple pie filling!
I have added a new photo album titled CANNING so you can see some photos of our work in progress!
Have a wonderful day! I am going back to the kitchen and "git er done!"
Dahlias from the garden
And Queen Anne's Lace
It makes me nuts that the rain here makes my tall plants lay down, next year I have to stake everything up using chicken wire and posts, I will put the wire horizontal to the plants and they grow up through it. I also plan to buy metal cattle panels to stand beside my sunflowers and tie them to it and keep the fox scent in the garden to keep them critters out. The squirrels are RUINING my tomatos and my sunflowers- the little .... varmints (insert VERY mad face here) You see, bugs I can deal with because I have experience with those,(Spray spray spray) but the rain laying my plants over and the squirrels are 2 new things I have to learn to battle. ARGH!
Cucumbers..... yummy!
Kay finished the wall around my herbs and it turned out pretty nice! This fall we will be adding dirt, compost etc to the right side of the inside of the bed in the photo to bring the ground level even. We will start on the raised beds this fall after school starts Aug 23rd.
It isnt round its acutally octagon shaped and its beautiful and larger in real life than it looks here! The very tall plants on the left are Amaranth.
How does your garden grow this summer?
Do you remember that song as a kid?
Well it's a song I sing with each harvest!
Check out my harvest this morning!!
A HUGE basket full of lovely onions and one lonely cuc!
My sunflowers have been literally dessimated by the raunchy squirrels ( I am now an official squirrel hater, and bass pro shop loves me for buying fox scent... grrrrrrr)
I have multi tasked all day long!
MMMM beets from the garden!
Check out the size of this head of dill! YIPPEE!
DILLY BEANS!!! 7 whole jars! the only thing I purchased was the garlic!
I have 5 jars of beans with onions and bacon in the pressure cooker- its time to get ready for bed and then read while they process.
Have a great night or day whatever it may be where you are-
G~
"Harvest Season"
With gardens now planted, you can look forward to harvest season. When you start to prepare for harvesting your crops, it is important to remember to use proper harvest and post harvesting methods. Here are some harvesting tips that apply for both vegetables and cut flowers.
Article courtesy of www.harrisseeds.com newsletter
